February 21, 2012 by Ashley Herron
TweetHappy Tuesday!
In the spirit of the new week, please check out the link below – Inc.com’s Christina DesMarais talked to Talener’s Michael Dsupin about Where to Snag Hot Start-up Talent.
Let us know what you think: http://www.inc.com/christina-desmarais/should-you-recruit-in-silicon-valley-or-silicon-alley.html
Thanks!
Posted in: Talener Blog, Company News, Talener Blog, News, Talener Blog, Talener Blog, Talener Culture
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February 17, 2012 by Chris F
TweetWhen people think of starts ups and VCs, they think Sillicon Valley, the mecca of Angeles, VCs and developers looking to change the world. Although that is pretty accurate; there has been a ton of Buzz regarding startups in LA and “Silicon Beach.” Last Friday The Talener LA team gathered together to go over recent rounds of Funding, discussing who was funded, who did the funding, and why this is so important.
With our positioning In the LA market, it’s crucial to develop good relationship with companies early on, and this has been pretty clear in 2012 with several placements being done at Startups.
When companies like Facebook and Zynga make a lot of young developers very wealthy with multi million or billion dollar IPO’s, it’s fair to expect many more startups popping up and VCs ready to fund the next “big thing. “ Considering the markets in San Francisco and New York are so saturated, we are starting to see more and more companies naturally starting in LA, hence the new buzz of “Sillicon Beach.”
With over 120 startups being funded just this year by Angels and VCs it’s clear that the rise of Startups in LA is here; growing and searching for top talent to propel their development and growth efforts. It is Talener LA’s job to find the best ones and match them up with the best Talent, something we are all very excited about and strive to assist these Startups develop into the next big thing.
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February 16, 2012 by Ashley Herron
TweetHappy Thursday!
Another day, another article featuring Talener’s prolific CEO Michael Dsupin. This time he was interviewed by Patrick Thibodeau for a Computerworld article. Please check out the article and let us know what you think. Also, maybe take a moment to look at the 2012 Linux Jobs Forecast put out by the Linux Foundation. There is some interesting information there.
Have a great day!
Just in case they don’t all show up correctly, here are the links again:
Computer World Article – Linux skills in demand, wages up: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9224294/Linux_skills_in_demand_wages_up?taxonomyId=11
2012 Linux Jobs: http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/announcements/2012/02/2012-linux-job-forecast-demand-rise
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February 13, 2012 by Arianne
TweetAnd how Talener can leverage changes to Google search results to positively affect our business
80 percent. That’s the percentage of search engine market share owned by Google. On January 10th, 2012, Google released a new search algorithm called “Search Plus Your World”. In a statement made by the company, Google characterized this change in their search algorithm as “Transforming [Google] into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships” Google is using data collected by users logged into their google.com (and Google+ accounts) make the act of searching “more relevant and personal to users signed into their Google.com accounts.”
This new algorithm is actually a bit of a misnomer, as Google search rankings are no longer going to be based only on algorithm, but will now take social signals into account. Why does this matter? This most recent change to the Google Algorithm means that each individual search query will return different results, dependent upon the user making the search. But how? New search results will be based upon social data taken from your own activity while you’re signed into Google, in addition to the activity of your social network on Google+. The new search listings will fall under one of the following categories:
-Listings from Web
-Listings from web, boosted because of your personal behavior (i.e. browsing history)
-Listings from the web boosted because of your social connections (chatting about and sharing content)
-Public Google+ posts, photos or Google Picasa photos
-Private or limited Google+ posts, photos, Picasa photos shared with you (most radical/recent change)
-Results promoted by the +1 button
What is the +1 button?
We’ll let Google explain: “+1 gets conversations going. Click the +1 button to give something your public stamp of approval. Then, if you want to share right away, add a comment and send it to the right circles on Google+. The next time your friends and contacts search on Google, they could see your +1. You’ll help them find the best stuff on the web – and you might just start up another conversation!”
From what I understand, the Plus +1 button focuses on enhancing the visibility of websites within search results. A lot of +1s on a website or article (like this one!) functions as a social indicator to Google that the website contains relevant and useful information. Clicking the +1 indicates that the content on a website is quality.
Back to us. Because the new “Search + Your World” is being rolled out over the next few weeks, some of us may have the feature already affecting our search, and some of us may not have seen it yet. Pay attention to your Google search over the coming months; there have been some important changes.
First: This new search option is an Opt Out feature, meaning once it has been added to your account; it will affect your search until you opt out of it. You can opt out permanently by going to search settings, or you can opt out on a per-search basis by moving the toggle to the right of the Google search bar from the silhouette to the globe. It’s important to remember that your every-day Googler is not very likely to make this change.
Second: Along with this new algorithm Google has opened up space for free advertising. Yep. Free Advertising. In the past, there has been a banner to the right of one’s search results with paid advertising. Now, that banner is home to “People and Pages on Google+”. Much to the chagrin of Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets, Google is using their right-hand column to actively promote Google+ profiles. Think of how much advertising revenue Google is sacrificing with this move!
It would be foolish for any business not to take advantage of this change in Google’s search results page. An active presence/profile on Google+ can dramatically increase your company’s online visibility, both within search results, and in the new “People and Pages” column on the right side of the page. And it has been argued that any business’s search ranking decreases without a Google+ profile.
The Next Move:
An optimized Google+ page for Talener (and for key employees within the company) can be used to create meaningful relationships online with both candidates and clients. The Google+ page can also be used to develop and display relevant content for Talener’s varied audiences. Talener’s Google+ page can be used to discuss issues within the recruiting industry, gives advice and information [to both candidates and clients], and promote our standing in both Google Search results, and in the “people and Pages” section.
How to Create a Good Google+ Business Profile:
-Add a picture/logo
-Good keyword placement in your Introduction and Subtitle Areas
-Quality of Content > Quantity of Content (LinkedIn differs from other social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook, because information is deliberately distributed, not just momentarily shared, like a post or a tweet)
-Leverage Personal Google+ profiles (+1 Talener’s page!) This is different from sharing on LinkedIn because it does not behave as spam, but rather the combined recommendation (of Talener) by people (us) within candidates/clients social networks
-Be thoughtful of the kind of content you post for each of your circles (candidate and client)
-Be intentional about Talener’s +1s, comments and shares.
Different Circles, Different Content
One of the advantages of Google+ profiles are that you control what you share with whom. For a staffing agency, this tool can be utilized to control the content shared with both Candidates and Clients. For example, some content that could be shared with candidates would be articles on the most desired skills, which industries are hiring, or interview tips. Some content that could be shared with hiring managers/clients would be an article on how 2012 is going to be the Year of the Candidate, how to find the best candidates, and how to get them to take your job (we could also share recommendations from clients through google+).
In Conclusion, by using Google+’s ability to cater content to our varied audiences, Talener can become a “thought leader” in our field, and generate content that is worth sharing and +1-ing. This should help improve our search ranking, and consequently drive quality traffic back to our Google profile and website. Finally, if we are able to improve the quality and quantity of internet traffic to our corporate website, we should be able to do more business (especially as Google works to increase their search engine market share).
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February 6, 2012 by Tiffany Roesler
TweetI feel like I’m riding the crest of a beautiful wave, being a Woman in Technology in New York City.
I plan on surfing this wave for one hell of a ride. My mission is to spotlight Women in Technology in New York City and create a meet-up for us to connect as peers, mentors and friends. As Marlo Thomas put it on the new Women’s Page of the Huffington-Post that launched this past August; “You need to lift up many women, not just one woman. For women there’s safety in numbers. If you have only one woman at the table, she’s a pest. Two women? That’s a team. But three? Now that’s a coalition.”
This past December Caroline Turner wrote in her article, Why women abandon the C suite-and how to get them back, “Women now represent about half of the hiring pipeline, entry-level positions and total workforce. But at each level of management, women represent a lower percentage.”
The 2011 Catalyst Census showed women representing 47.6% of today’s workforce; in the 2011 Fortune 500 women represented only 14.4 percent of executive officers, and only made up 7.6% of top earners. The good news is that Prior Catalyst research also revealed that advancing women to leadership positions is good for women and good for business. The census found companies with more women in top leadership positions, on average, far outperform those with fewer. Another new Catalyst release, The Bottom Line: Corporate Performance and Women’s Representation on Boards (2004–2008), indicates that sustained gender diversity in the boardroom correlates with better corporate performance―and not by just a little. Companies with three or more women board directors in four of five years, on average, outperformed companies with zero women board directors―by 84% return on sales, 60% return on invested capital, and 46% return on equity.
My research has shown me that women even if they don’t literally leave, they disengage or just quit climbing. As women in leadership roles, we need to strive to inspire our people and inspire our fellows. Helping and connecting with other women in the NYC Tech frontlines will produce high level support in turn re-engaging ourselves while simultaneously making us more confident leaders
Our Time is now and these women are doing it. Let’s take a look into who they are, where they work and what they’ve accomplished.
Arianna Huffington is the president and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post Media Group, a nationally syndicated columnist, and author of thirteen books. Her news blog site has become the most widely read, linked to and frequently cited media brands on the internet. She has been twice named to Time magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people.
Heather Harde
Vice President, TechCrunch
Heather Harde has help bring TechCrunch from her boss’s living room to being acquired for a reported number between $40-50 million by AOL. Heather spent the previous decade at News Corp., where she learned much of the discipline and skills needed to turn a group of bloggers into a media powerhouse. In Fast Company magazine Harde says, “I had an appreciation of how difficult it was to create a brand in media. TechCrunch had become a brand. It now needed to scale into a media property.”
Chloe Sladden
Media Partnerships, Twitter
Sladden is responsible for partnering Live tweeting during media broadcasts. In 2010 she brought “Live Tweeting” to be a key part of the MTV Video Music Awards which resulted in over 11 million viewers, the highest rated show since 2002. Sladden also pioneered the first time a major news organization partnered with Twitter during the 2008 election. She had a call to action to vote in the morning via twitter, and then journalists followed up with a live chat in the afternoon. She is currently working to bridge Twitter’s API and TV, news and entertainment platforms.
Rachel Sterne
Chief Digital Officer, New York City
Sterne started GroundReport in 2006 and has become the Web’s best real-time-news portals according to Fast Company Magazine. The role has led her to be the Chief Digital Officer in New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration.
Jessica Kahn
Vice President of Engineering, Disney Mobile
Jessica Kahn is the brains behind the Tap Tap Revenge which is the most popular iPhone game. She manages engineering, operations, and strategy. Kahn thought she’d be a lawyer, until she took a coding class her senior year at Dartmouth. Kahn was also an Apple software engineer for almost 10 years.
Jennifer Hyman and Jennifer Fleiss
Co-Founders, Rent the Runway
This duo’s e-commerce company Rent the Runway allows women across America to rent instead of purchasing luxury designer dresses and accessories. Hyman and Fleiss are on track to revolutionize the fashion industry. The pair met at Harvard Business School and is taking a customer behavior of buying to renting. Converting those I’ll only wear that once purchases into rentals. The site works as a hotel reservation site and women can rent a dress for an occasion starting at $50 receiving the dress for up to eight days.
Enter W.I.Ny.C;)
Let’s take action and impact ourselves and support other woman. I present to you, Women, Inspire, New York City – W.I.Ny.C 
. A technology based meet up for Women in NYC.
On the last Thursday of every month we will meet up and have a selected speaker lead a topical round table discussion. W.I.Ny.C.;)’s meet up will be a place for women to share their story, future goals as well as current challenges. Our first meet-up will be February 23, 2012 at my office, located at 11 East 44th Street, suite 1200. We will start at 7pm, please let me know if you would like to join us.
I can be reached at troelser@talener.com
I look forward to meeting you.
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February 2, 2012 by Mike Dsupin
Tweetby
Joel SpolskyFeb 2, 2012, 5:31 am ET
inShare15
I just read that the average Silicon Valley tech salary is over $100,000. I’ve seen starting salaries for CS graduates come pretty close to the magical $100,000 mark. Google recently had to give a 10% raise to all its employees just to stay competitive.
Yep, programmers are getting expensive. But my experience has been that most great programmers don’t really have salary as their No. 1 consideration when deciding where to work. They only worry about salary when the job is so awful that it has to pay well or they couldn’t imagine sticking around.
Here are 10 things that many programmers think about first, long before salary even comes into play:
You may think that some of these things are completely out of your control … and they may be. Sometimes people run job listings on Stack Overflow and get very few resumes. Then they ask me, “why didn’t we get any applicants for our job listing?” And I look at it and think, “baby Moses in a basket, why would anyone want to work there?”
I know, it’s hard to say, but it’s true: some jobs are just not that attractive, and it’s not a problem of “finding programmers,” it’s a problem of “making this a place where people want to work.”
The first thing to learn is that company founders and CEOs don’t care about the same things as programmers. Usually, if you’re doing what your founder/CEO thought would be nice, you’re not really optimizing for programmers. Founder/CEOs, for example, like to save money, and they like to know what’s going on, so they think having a big room where everyone can overhear everything is a terrific work environment. Programmers need to concentrate, so they would work in a brown cardboard box if it was quiet and free from interruptions.
If you’re scoring kind of low on the “desirable workplace” scale, all is not lost. There’s a lot you can do to fix these issues, even if you are a company that makes atom bombs run by a megalomaniac micromanager with an office on a platform in the Arctic Ocean.
Come to the ERE Expo in San Diego in March, and I’ll go into this in a lot more depth in my keynote. I’ll tell you what I know about how programmers work, what they like, what they care about, and I promise you’ll leave with a lot of ideas of how to make your workplace way more attractive and interesting to the average programmer.
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February 1, 2012 by Ashley Herron
TweetJesse Richards was referred to Talener by a candidate we placed last month, Rich Couzzi. He was a senior product manager with a very strong skillset and management level experience. From the moment we sat down with Jesse, he was honest and upfront about his qualifications and what type of position he desired. With a market-center background, mobile and social media expertise, and a charismatic personality, we knew we’d be able to generate several opportunities for him.
The Project Management team worked closely with Jesse for several weeks, building a close relationship and getting a better understanding of where his background would be a good fit. He was always honest with his feedback and prompt with communication. Working with accessible, straightforward, and affable candidates always makes our job so much easier.
One company we were working with, Offerpop, had been searching months to find someone just like him. They wanted someone who had his industry experience, but more importantly- his demonstrated interest and passion for their product. After meeting with managers at Offerpop, it was clear that this was a perfect match on both sides. The company immediately put out an offer, and Jesse couldn’t have been happier to accept. He will be their Director of Product, a critical position in helping the growing company expand.
We wish Jesse the best, and can’t wait to see how Offerpop evolves in the coming months. Check out Offerpop at www.offerpop.com, and Jesse’s self-penned book The Secret Peace: Exposing the Positive Trend of World Events.
February 1, 2012 by Mike Dsupin
TweetWe just finished our first month of the year and the data is in. If anyone wants to argue about the talent level and demand for that talent in Silicon Valley and San Francisco vs. NYC and LA, then you’ll love this.
Our average placement fee for January 2012:
That means that the average salary for candidates:
If I were a Software, Web, Mobile, JAVA, Microsoft, Open-Source Developer, Architect or Manager, I’d sure want to check out what’s going on in Silicon Valley.
Sorry NYC and LA.
Posted in: Talener Blog, Client News, Talener Blog, Company News, Talener Blog
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January 31, 2012 by Mike Dsupin
TweetCANDIDATE FEEDBACK
With a very aggressive job market for Software Engineers, it is easy for a candidate to confuse interviews, companies, jobs, etc. Here’s a series of questions that we ask our candidates after they complete interviews from us that we hope you find it a useful tool.
Immediate questions to answer after the interview
1) First impression of the interview, how did the interview go?
2) How did you do in the interview?
3) How long were you there?
4) Who did you meet? (Names and Title)
5) What did you talk with those people about? What questions did they ask you?
6) How did you handle the questions?
7) How did they describe the job to you?
8) What questions did you ask them?
9) What technical questions did they ask you specifically and who asked you those questions?
10) How did you leave things off when you left?
11) What do you think of the job, people, company, technology?
12) If they are interested in bringing you back for another interview, would you be interested in going back for another interview?
13) What questions do you still have about the job, the company, the team, the technology, the future?
14) Do you want the job? What did you like specially about the position
Comparison Time:
Activity: Keep a List/Spreadsheet. Activity can mean interviews, places you’ve sent your resume to, friends who you’ve given your resume to, etc.
Past, Present, Future (Not yet schedules, but companies that you are interested in and have received some level of response)
What other positions have you interview for past and present? What are the interviews do you have scheduled? What other companies are you waiting to hear back from?
Rank: What’s your #1 Job and why? What’s your #2 and why? Etc.
1) How do the new jobs compare to your current role or the prospect of staying on the Market?
2) Compare: $, Location, Technology, Growth path, Team, Company, Role
Process:
1) How many interviews have you had with each company?
2) What needs to happen to schedule another interview?
3) What needs to happen to make an offer?
4) Do you have your references?
5) Will you pass a background check, drug test, pre-employment test?
6) Have you spoken to your significant other about your new job opportunities? How would a new job affect your life? (Benefits, Working Hours, Commute Time and Cost)
Offer: More is always better, but:
1) What is your ideal offer?
2) How are you going to negotiate with the client to get to that number?
3) What is acceptable?
4) What will you definitely turn down?
January 31, 2012 by Tom
TweetRecent improvements to technology within the health and fitness industries have resulted in groundbreaking medical advancements, allowed a new breed of athlete to accomplish what was considered to be impossible ten years ago, and improved the daily lives of anyone with access to it. These milestones have also assisted in generating record revenues: the United States’ health and fitness industry was valued at $7 trillion in 2011. Not too surprising considering that 1 in every 3 children in the United States is classified as obese. However, there is a steadily increasing percentage of American’s starting to prioritize their health the same way they stay connected with the world; by using their phones and their associated mobile markets.
In 2010, mobile applications downloads related to the health fitness industry generated a total of $100 million in revenue. Among these applications was “RunKeeper”, a downloadable application that allows a user to view their running/jogging route, distance, heart rate (with monitor attachment), and other performance gauges, while it’s activated during activity. FitnessKeeper, Inc (the company behind Runkeeper), a Boston based company, recently released plans to open up a new Boston headquarters to accommodate their rapidly growing staff. FitnessKeeper is only one in an industry comprised of thousands of small tech start-ups dedicated exclusively to the engineering of applications such as the wildly popular RunKeeper (identified by TIME in 2009 as one of the top ten iphone apps).
Analysts predicted the health and fitness mobile application industry to quadruple in growth from 2010 to 2011. However, what analysts did not project is that in 2011 17% of all smart-phone users would download an application related to health and fitness. When 2011 closed, 44 million applications had been downloaded for a total revenue of $718 million. Mobile revenue for 2012 is projected to grow to $1.3 billion; which is a microscopic fraction of the $7 trillion the health and fitness industry generates every year.
These applications allow mobile users to have valuable, and potentially life-saving, information at their fingertips. One application, called “Cellscope,” allows users to diagnose any surface ailments by simply taking a picture of the affected area and uploading it into the application. The app then diagnosis the injury, informs you of its severity, and provides you with a treatment plan.
The revenue generated from the purchasing of applications, such as RunKeeper and Cellscope, is projected to grow to $1.3 billion in 2012. That figure will only increase in subsequent years as mobile applications become more practical and prevalent in people’s lives. The market growth potential is enormous, and is certainly an industry to keep a close eye on.
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